


too tired to go the other way

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: Climb Up Above Your Precious Time [4]
Category: The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Captivity, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Dreamsharing, Family, Fear, Fear of Abandonment, Fever, Gen, Guilt, Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Anguish, Mental Coercion, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Nausea, Protectiveness, Resurrection, Sleep Paralysis, Spells & Enchantments, Temptation, Trapped, h/c_bingo, hostages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: Jake must have been woken by his anguish, he peered at him almost in rapt fascination.Will blinked swollen and dampened eyes, no, that wasn’t what it was.
Series: Climb Up Above Your Precious Time [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085234
Kudos: 1
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 11





	too tired to go the other way

**Author's Note:**

> Written for h/c_bingo for the prompt captivity.

[ _there’s nothing I can do, a slave to your hands_ ]

* * *

He woke with a scream caught in his throat, his limbs refusing to move, his voice refusing to be heard, caught in her greedy claws. It didn’t matter. Jake must have been woken by his anguish, he peered at him almost in rapt fascination.

Will blinked swollen and dampened eyes, no, that wasn’t what it was.

There were tears in Jake’s eyes. Worse than the tears in his brother’s eyes was the fact that Will had put them there, made his brother sick with worry.

Jake had always been able to hold Will back and calm him down with a soft word or a sharp glance, but Will struggled to remember a time when he had been comforted rather than the other way around. “It’s alright, Will.”

_No_ , Will wanted to protest but didn’t have his voice back yet. _No, it isn’t. Nothing will ever be alright again._

Why couldn’t Jake understand? Why did he have to spell it out when physically he couldn’t and emotionally it would break him and shatter their bond forever?

Jake prodded as Will half-suspected he would. “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

Will shook his head. He was still trembling, overheated and sweating and achy, bile at the back of his throat. He felt horrible, imagined he looked even more so judging by the tender gaze in his brother’s eyes. Jake bit his lip before slipping out of bed to light another candle and procure his notebook. Will watched every movement, mostly fearful his brother would sit at the small table in the far corner of the room, leaving him to his stubbornness and misery. But he should not have viewed his brother in such a callous way because Jake was swift, slipping back underneath the sweat-dampened blankets, close enough for skin-on-skin contact.

Will exhaled, feeling his heart beat slightly less forcefully, his fingers twitching as he struggled to move, trying to form words despite not knowing what they might be. His fear of continuing to push Jacob away, however, proved a far greater weight than the fear of being left alone in the darkness.

“Sorry,” he managed, “...scared,” and shut his eyes in dismay at such a blatant outpouring of vulnerability. It was a wisp of a whisper, a crackle of love under a mountain of regret, a heavy repentance subject to rejection under a brother’s discretion, a wound laid bare under a lashing or a flood of salt or even a forgiving nature. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

Nonetheless, it was too much. He felt so _sick_ , sick to his stomach, sick at heart. A hand cupped his brow, thumbed his cheek, smoothed over his arm, pulling a blanket tighter against him as he swallowed back wave after wave of bile. The small bit of soup he had forced down earlier that night wouldn’t stay down for long.

“Oh, Will. Will, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” A shuddering breath and sniffling and a damp patch at his collarbone made Will feel even more wretched. “Just stay... stay with me. I’m here. I’m right here.” Jake was babbling, simultaneously clinging to and yet shaking off denial. He tucked his head under Will’s chin as a child would, as a young Jake once would to hide from a world not up to his standards, his hands alternately smashed into pillows or gripping Will’s flushed skin. He was equal parts gentle and desperate, trembling nearly as much as Will was, sick from the same emotions: fear and shame and misery.

Will just had to lay there and take it, but there was nowhere else he’d rather be. He might be trapped in his own body but Jake was just as trapped as he was.

He might always be her prisoner in dreams, a deep but fleeting enchantment, but when he woke he would be his brother’s, a bond no enchantment could break.


End file.
